In fact, making everything much worse...
Creating pictures uses the other side of the brain to language, ( left or right, don't recall just at the moment) allows me to speak in a different way and show another side to my thoughts..
Brains, aye.
This is where I started this year, Clydesdale Girl. A woman with giant horse hooves, walking but stumbling, tripping and falling off balance because of her huge unhuman feet....
Crayon/Wallpaper.
Pictures in chronological order of creation......
Crayon/Ink/Wallpaper.
The otherworldly, ethereal being, slender but deceivingly strong.Androgenous but taking a more masculine form.
Most of these are fairly large pieces (1m by 70cm approx or larger), either crayon, ink pen or watercolour on the wall side of wallpaper sections.
The Human.
Crayon/Ink/Wallpaper.
Human in every way, earthbound, mammalian and also female. Pregnant with new life. These first two are a pair.. human/inhuman/female/male....
Sometimes I've found such cool and froody old patterned wallpaper, I just want to frame it, on it's own..
Some of these from around '04-'05, the rest, March to May 2010.
Some pencil drawings too...
Rising Tide... Pencil/Ink/Wallpaper.
....That old drowning feeling....swim, dammit!
Heart in the Sky. All-encompassing Love, superceding both death and new life. Crayon/Ink/Acrylic on Wooden frame/Paper heart.
MerDisciples.
Originally intended to be my Last Supper, I removed the table and turned them all into mermaids and mermen (I blame the proximity of the ocean). Always wanted my own devoted cult, hanging off my every word. Of course, I'm the blonde, twin-tailed monster in charge.....my beautiful, secretive, hairdresser/metaller merdisciples....ten. Twelve is just greedy, in my book.
Pencil/Wallpaper.
Original Ancestor. What you get when you cross mermaids with angels, wing-shaped fins and a lot of gills. A powerful, deep-water creature...
Pencil/Glitter Gel/Wallpaper.
River Sprite (2004). Inhuman, water-dwelling... Watercolour/Wallpaper.
Jeanne du Arc (2004) Taking the enemy's arrow to the chest as she crests the wall of the fortress on a siege ladder, a potential death-blow..and survives to keep fighting. From one of the movies.
Crayon/Wallpaper.
Pencil/Book
(A word association game played vertically then horizontally..)
Spider-friend Study.Pencil/Paper.
Spaces Between... Acrylic/Wallpaper.
Circles circles circles. Acrylic/Wallpaper.
a couple more......
Nothing too indicative, Two-Dollar Shop paint squirted through nozzles, in circles, onto small canvases. Able to be hung in at least four different views, depending on personal taste.
First Self Portrait in pencil.....the first face. Pencil/Wallpaper.
Self Portrait Parts One to Three..Acrylic/PVA glue.
Self Portrait Part Four...Acrylic/PVA glue.
Portrait... January Part One. Acrylic/PVA glue.
Bones Reinforced.......Acrylic/PVA glue.
Bones Reinforced
Bones... Acrylic/PVA glue.
Seeds....Acrylic/PVA glue.
The Fat Man...PVA/Hi Build/Acrylic on Hardwood mirror base.
The marquee, I sewed myself on two sewing machines at home (killed one in the process) from a lot of secondhand cotton duvet covers from op shops and garage sales.
The project began in an extremely sensible sun-safe way, wanting a moveable shadey place bigger than an umbrella for myself and my pale-skinned family while spending hours at the beach. It kind of grew... and grew...and grew, from a tent concept to the very un-sensible small circus marquee it now is. It has four roll-up sides,panels to let in filtered light, bamboo poles from the kiwifruit orchard I used to live on, guy ropes from The Warehouse and serious fuck-off tent pegs from my local camping shop.
Made in late 2007, jacked up on too high a dose of anti-depressants, to familial and critical alarm, I named it Effexor and until 2013, it had only been put up once at a party at a friends paddock in Hamurana, Rotorua, at night. Lit from inside with a powerful spotlight, it glowed beautifully in the dark. Not even slightly water proof but a great venue for fair-weather events....
Once, putting it up for a photoshoot for this blog, in a grassy, tree-lined reserve in Ginnantonica, with two of my teenagers, a grumpy retired old bugger called the cops on us, terrified the Gypsies were moving in. Calm, reassuring words were exchanged between the two nice Polices and I.
Used in Breakthru-Raising Mental Health Awareness Day, Oct 10th 2013 at the Edgewater Fan, downtown Tauranga City, it was with much delight that I learnt that we had to include it on the site plan for the event and get permission to put it up from the Tauranga City Council, though it DID have to be moved further away from the railway lines and Pohutakawa trees. Right into the centre. Too big, to risk getting sucked into a train.
At 35 square metres, my largest work to date.
At Breakthru
Laid out, test run for Breakthru, in a secluded park
Needs at least four people to erect, preferably five, one for each corner and a runner.
Inside shot, Breakthru committee. Sept 2013
